Minor Compositions

11/08/2024

The Minor Compositions website is temporarily down due to a computer breaking type thing. Sorry about that. In the meantime, until it’s fixed, everyone can enjoy dancing to this classic banger….

Wow.. Really didn't think this video would be this popular. Apparently people come here when a server to a game is down. Ha! Epic.. Anyway, enjoy! Yes it's j...

06/08/2024

“This is how it should be done: lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of deterritorialization, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions here and there, try out continuums of intensities segment by segment, have a small plot of new land at all times.” - Deleuze and Guattari

19/07/2024

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 17 Militant Aesthetics with Martin Lang
https://fireflyfrequencies.org/podcasts/minor-compositions

For this episode we talk with art historian and painter Martin Lang about this book Militant Aesthetics: Art Activism in the 21st Century. How are practices of art activism changing in the current political and media climate? What tensions exist within these forms of political engagement and how can they be productively worked with rather ignored or denied?

From the description of the book: “Protest art is not a new concept and yet this book argues that after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 distinctly 21st-century forms of art activism emerged. On the one hand these became militant as artists retained belief in the possibility of radical political change through art. On the other hand, this belief developed in a hostile environment, when anti-terror legislations reclassified activists and artists as terrorists. Militant Aesthetics sheds light on numerous international case studies of modern art activism and the different ways they can be classified as militant. Combining these examples with the pioneering thought of Badiou, Žižek, Rancière and Mouffe, Lang investigates the instances, attributes and rules of militant art in order to introduce a new overall theory of 21st-century militant aesthetics.”

17/07/2024

Now available for ordering and/or free download…

Communist Ontologies. An Inquiry into the Construction of New Forms of Life
Bruno Gullì & Richard Gilman-Opalsky

“To be communist is to be lost, looking for an answer, looking for a way out. Communist Ontologies is an explicit dialogue between Bruno Gullì and Richard Gilman-Opalsky. The book breaks with the monologue form, brings us away too from any monological concept of anti-capitalist politics. It is extraordinarily rich and extraordinarily enriching… A stroll by two communists, immensely rewarding, immensely subversive.” – John Holloway, from the Preface

With all appropriate modesties and heresies, Bruno Gullì and Richard Gilman-Opalsky think together in the ways of other kindred spirits like Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, bell hooks and Cornel West, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, and Stefano Harney and Fred Moten. Gullì and Gilman-Opalsky undertake a philosophical and political inquiry into capitalist forms of life and communist ontologies. From a deep, dialectical study of each other’s work, they aim at a new synthesis of theory about possible and desirable beings-in-the-world. Rejecting capitalist conceptions of labor, politics, sovereignty, economy, (neo)liberalism, community, the individual, art, revolution, social change, and even the human person, Gullì and Gilman-Opalsky propose new ways of thinking and being antagonistic to the existing world (such as it is). They consider the prospects for new forms of life realized by way of the emancipatory dreams and struggles of everyday people.

13/07/2024

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 16 Sports & the Avant-Garde with Przemysław Strożek
https://fireflyfrequencies.org/podcasts/minor-compositions

For this episode we talk with Przemysław Strożek about the relationship between avant-garde arts and sports in the 1920s and 1930s. We discuss two of his books, one as editor: Sport and the European Avant-Garde (1900–1945); and one as sole author: Picturing the Workers’ Olympics and the Spartakiads: Modernist and Avant-Garde Engagement with Sport in Central Europe and the USSR, 1920–1932. What was the role of avant-garde artists in the emergence of working class sports cultures during this period? How did they contribute to the shaping of the politics of mass sporting events such as the Workers’ Olympics? And what might these histories tell about the relationship between sports, politics, and art for today and into the future?

19/06/2024

Now available for ordering and/or free download…

The Wages of Dreamwork. Class Composition & the Social Reproduction of Cultural Labor
Stevphen Shukaitis & Joanna Figiel

31/05/2024

Erin Manning exhibition in London. The book she published with Minor Compositions, "Out of the Clear" is standing in as the catalogue for the exhibition.

100 ACRES 31 MAY—22 JUNE 2024 LONDON
https://www.richardsaltoun.com/exhibitions/125-erin-manning-100-acres/

Richard Saltoun Gallery is pleased to present 100 Acres, the first solo exhibition of Canadian cultural theorist, political philosopher and artist, Erin MANNING (b. 1969) in the UK and at a private gallery. Manning’s practice is predominantly textile-based and relationally-oriented, often participatory, with a strong pedagogical interest.

100 Acres is a site-specific installation encompassing the entire gallery, composed of two twenty-five yard cuts of monks cloth that are sewn, embroidered, knotted and tufted. In a refusal of distantism - the belief that the world is given to us in the establishing shot of overview - the work recalls the encounter of the forest as lived through the 3Ecologies Project (3E). 3E engages in para-pedagogies of resistance, fostering techniques for other ways of living and learning at the intersection of the « three ecologies » (social, conceptual, and environmental). 3E’s aim is to give the land back to itself; purchasing it, taking it out of the property market, and preserving it in perpetuity within an extended ecology of stewardship, experimentation and learning.The forest serves as a speculative garden, an incitement for other ways of touching existence. Deeply engaged with the ProTactile movement of the DeafBlind community, the project asks how else the world calls us to sense and sensing beyond distantism.

100 Acres continues the project by other means, composing in accompaniment to the relational fields of the forest, giving them an echo in the gallery. Textures of sense generate choreographies relaying the form and force of more-than-human encounter. The ethos is of participation, beyond art as object. Drafted by the artist, the protocol invites audience participation in the project of giving the forest back to itself. The cut reveals the fragility of its weave.

PRIVATE VIEW: 31 MAY | 6PM As a part of London Gallery Weekend How big is the forest? It is the forest of the world. It is infinite. It twists around as a snake swallows its own tail and has no end and no beginning. No one has seen its...

28/05/2024

Now available for ordering and/or free download…
Fables of Re-enchantment. Multiplicity, Imaginary, Revolution
Stefania Consigliere

16/04/2024

Desire + Capital Podcast
E5: Ketamine Standard Time: Thinking With the Music

In this episode, it's all about the music. Ryan and Jamie are joined by special guest Stevphen Shukaitis. They will be taking a short leave from Marx and talk about desire through the art of music. We got a lot to get through, so on your Marx, get set, let’s go!

Ryan and Jamie talking about people talking about Marx, and occasionally Marx himself. This is our attempt to make a six volume podcast series about Marx. Each volume has two parts. In the first part we analyse and go into talks about Marx from gr...

09/04/2024

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 15 Class, Disasters, and Mutual Aid with John Preston and Rhiannon Firth
https://fireflyfrequencies.org/podcasts/minor-compositions

For this episode we talk with John Preson and Rhiannon Firth about the relationship between class, disasters, and mutual aid. The conversation is formed mainly around re-visiting their 2020 book “Coronavirus, Class and Mutual Aid in the United Kingdom” but branches off to discussing broader issues including nuclear war, live sociology, and conspiracies.

“This book considers how the UK government’s response to the recent COVID-19 pandemic disadvantages the working class, and how mutual aid, based on anarchist principles, can be used as a force for social change.

The authors draw on Marxist and anarchist thought in class theory and social movement analysis to demonstrate that the virus and its material and discursive consequences are an active part of continuing class struggle and class interpolation. Preston and Firth examine how plans for quarantine and social isolation systematically work against the needs of the working class, and rely on classed assumptions about how markets and altruism operate.

In the face of neoliberal methods of dealing with a pandemic, ranging from marketization, disaster capitalism, to a strengthening of the State, Coronavirus, Class and Mutual Aid in the United Kingdom explains how radical alternatives such as social movements and mutual aid can be implemented to better cope with current and future crises.”

28/02/2024

NSK State – FIAT
https://youtu.be/g31nAE8FE4E

When citizens of a virtual art-state took it upon themselves to create a new currency, they chose a radically different direction than the blockchain coins currently in vogue. By appropriating not only the physical materials but also the functional aspects of the existing financial apparatus, the principals of the NSK State Reserve extended the retro-avantgarde toolkit of the NSK State to bring the financial industry and its history into frame. This book reprints the notes and bonds created by The Reserve, recounts key events from the history of this institution, and offers direct insight into their process and principles.

When citizens of a virtual art-state took it upon themselves to create a new currency, they chose a radically different direction than the blockchain coins c...

22/02/2024

transversal audio season Spring 2024

The coming transversal audio season will center around discussions on non-traditional or even clandestine publishing practices from the peripheries, as part of the Peripheral Visions project. The notion of “peripherality” is critically approached and often subverted within these discussions, but serves as a sort of central theme in understanding the challenges and commonalities between these very unique practices.

Beginning with a look at the legacy and contemporary importance of the publication Arkzin (based in Zagreb, 1991-1998) and its ability to both exist as an anti-war platform in the midst of war, while reaching audiences both across the region as well as beyond it, the discussions will expand to look at the present-day context. This will include platforms that were connected to and influenced by Arkzin, such as Novi Sad-based kuda.org, which has existed from 2001 to the present, and the creative approaches they’ve developed for facing challenges over the years. A conversation with the Ljubljana-based platform Maska looks at the role of care in the arts in their recent publications and collaborations, while discussing their use of the term “Yugofuturism” as a theoretical point of departure for thinking through multiple temporalities for reimagining the challenges of the present. This first block of talks will conclude with a discussion with Mišo Kapetanović on q***r perspectives for subverting gatekeeping concepts in research on former-Yugoslavia, particularly Bosnia.

Arkzin, its Legacy and Contemporary Importance
https://transversal.at/audio/arkzin

13/02/2024

Nice review of "Welcome Home" in The Comics Journal

"This is neither a dull political polemic nor an artistic experiment for experimentation's sake. Rather, it's an alternately moving and humorous story of an attempt by activists to save a housing block from demolition and gentrification. The confluence of genres in Welcome Home—drama, comedy, romance—do an excellent job of capturing the experiences of day to day life. There is also an element of what I’d consider magical realism, given that the housemates' two pets can talk, with the dog quoting Trotsky and the cat voicing the opinions of right-wing tabloids. For obvious reasons, the two don’t get along. It is also a very authentic story, reflecting the Popes’ involvement in squatting and housing struggles."

02/12/2023

Good to hear about this new bookstore and project coming to Norwich...

"Caracol Books is a new radical bookshop and education project based in Norwich. In the tradition of many radical bookshops, we are a not-for-profit project run exclusively by people freely volunteering their time, energy and resources. Our aim is to provide access to revolutionary texts that inspire people to imagine and build different and better worlds. We specialise in texts from across the revolutionary, autonomous and anti-authoritarian traditions including but not limited to communism, anarchism, and socialism. We are hoping to continue expanding our selection as we grow to include practical guides on ecology, fiction, and books for children and young people.

We want to be more than just a bookshop though. Our hope is that we can play a small part in the expansion of a radical movement in Norwich and beyond. We hold a non-dogmatic stance with our revolutionary politics and believe that aspects from all of these traditions have tremendous value and importance for our current time."

By Dan of Caracol Books Caracol Books is a new radical bookshop and education project based in Norwich. In the tradition of many radical bookshops,we are a not-for-profit project and run exclusivel…

16/11/2023

Erin Manning on the Choreography of Neurodiversity
For the Wild Episode 356
https://forthewild.world/listen/erin-manning-on-the-choreography-of-neurodiversity-356

Blending theory, practice, and fascinating cultural vision, this week’s conversation with Erin Manning calls into question the systems and practices that keep us stuck.

Erin’s imagination and openness seem endless as she describes how we may work to create movements for other ways of being. Crucially, Erin describes her understanding of modalities of being, explaining that neurotypicality is a system that undergirds our ways of knowing and our ways of being a body. There is no singular “neurotypical person” just as there is no singular “neurodiverse” person. Rather, we are trained into a choreography that encourages us to “practice neurotypicality well” and punishes us if we do not.

Understanding the ways these systems work is vital as we untangle the hegemony and oppression that have dictated what counts as knowledge, what is valuable in a body, and even what bodies are “worth” being alive. The episode shares the resounding call that “we owe everything to each other.” How can we give into that call?

Erin Manning's work is grounded in scholarship on neurodiversity, Blackness, and ways of being that move outside of and beyond the status quo. In this episode, Erin shares her contemplations on the role of academia, her commitment to pedagogies that make space for creativity, her understanding of Au

15/11/2023

Now available for ordering and/or free download....

Senyawa: Compound Lyricism: https://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=1291
Translation of lyrics from experimental Indonesian band Senyawa

Senyawa, the experimental Indonesian band formed by Rully Shabara and Wukir Suryadi, does not sound like anyone else… the combination of Wukir’s handmade instruments and Rully’s other-worldly vocals, channeling Javanese melodies with the intensity of punk and metal, with an avant-garde / DIY approach to constant experimentation and boundary pushing.

Over the past ten years Senyawa have continually developed their sound, shifting in relation with the instruments Wukir builds. Unfortunately for people who do not understand the various Indonesian dialects used, while you can appreciate their music and performances, you can appreciate the aurality of Senyawa – the sheer force and wonder of their music – but not the lyrical content.

This project is intended to rectify that, translating Rully’s lyrics for Senyawa into English for the first time.

13/11/2023

Now available for ordering and/or free download…

Protocols for Postcapitalist Economic Expression. Agency, Finance and Sociality in the New Economic Space
Dick Bryan, Jorge Lopez and Akseli Virtanen

�What would an Internet native economic system look like? Could economic power be systematically shared amongst individuals and their self-defined groups, with no central economic authority? And could that system secure collectively defined social and environmental benefits and create liquidity for their production? ��In Protocols for Postcapitalist Economic Expression Bryan, Lopez and Virtanen build the conditions for such a system. Where economic processes are not dictated by profit, what counts as value-creation, and is rewarded by dividends, can be collectively determined by the network. Care, the arts, the environment will not be after-thoughts, to be subsidized by states or the rich: they can be at the core of the economy’s value proposition.

�This book develops protocols that can generate all these processes. A blend of theoretical engagement with big economic ideas (Marx, Keynes, Hayek and others), media and information analytics and careful protocol design of token-related processes of distributed exchange, matching, netting and clearing, Protocols systematically builds an alternative to neoliberal capitalism, centrally-planned socialism and reformist social democracy. In an expressive, creative, risk-sharing, data-rich network of investing, producing, exchanging and lending, standard economic propositions get stood on their heads... and new political possibilities emerge.

10/11/2023

Will be tabling tomorrow during the first part of this Outsider Arts Festival at the Old Spotted Dog (in East London)

07/10/2023

Tabling today at the London Anarchist Bookfair. Come on down and say hi. It’s the anarcho-shopping event of the year, or something like that.

12/09/2023

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 14: Revolutionary Love & the Deep Commons with Matt York
https://fireflyfrequencies.org/podcasts/minor-compositions

For this episode we talk with Matt York about his book Love and Revolution: A politics for the Deep Commons

“Based on award-winning research, Love and Revolution brings classical and contemporary anarchist thought into a mutually beneficial dialogue with a global cross-section of ecological, anti-capitalist, feminist and anti-racist activists – discussing real-life examples of the loving-caring relations that underpin many contemporary struggles.
​
Such a (r)evolutionary love is revealed to be a common embodied experience among the activists contributing to this collective vision, manifested as a radical solidarity, as political direct action, as long-term processes of struggle, and as a deeply relational more-than-human ethics. The theory developed in this book is brought to life through the voices of Tom at the G20 protests in Toronto, Maria and her permaculture community in Mexico, Hassan on the streets in Syria, Angelo and his comrades occupying squares in Brazil, Dembe and his affinity group in Kampala, and many more.”

05/09/2023

Nice review & discussion of "Paths to Autonomy"

Commoning for Autonomy/Autonomy for the Commons

By Andreas Petrossiants – Mary N. Taylor and Noah Brehmer (eds.), The Commonist Horizon: Futures Beyond Capitalist Urbanization (Common Notions, 2023). – Noah Brehmer with Vaida Stepano…

03/09/2023

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 13: Up Against the Real with Nadja Millner-Larsen
https://fireflyfrequencies.org/podcasts/minor-compositions

For this episode we talk with Nadja Millner-Larsen about her book Up Against the Real
Black Mask from Art to Action.

“With Up Against the Real, Nadja Millner-Larsen offers the first comprehensive study of the group Black Mask and its acrimonious relationship to the New York art world of the 1960s. Cited as pioneers of now-common protest aesthetics, the group’s members employed incendiary modes of direct action against racism, colonialism, and the museum system. They shut down the Museum of Modern Art, fired blanks during a poetry reading, stormed the Pentagon in an antiwar protest, sprayed cow’s blood at the secretary of state, and dumped garbage into the fountain at Lincoln Center. Black Mask published a Dadaist broadside until 1968, when it changed its name to Up Against the Wall Mo********er (after line in a poem by Amiri Baraka) and came to classify itself as “a street gang with analysis.” American activist Abbie Hoffman described the group as “the middle-class nightmare . . . an anti-media phenomenon simply because their name could not be printed.”

31/08/2023

Cruel memories of displacement
A tale of squatting told in a graphic novel
by Sean Alan Cleary
Fifth Estate # 413, Spring, 2023
a review of
Welcome Home by Clarrie and Blanche Pope

Fifth Estate Magazine, radical publishing since 1965

26/07/2023

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 12: The Subhumans & Punk Historiography with Ian Glasper
https://fireflyfrequencies.org/podcasts/minor-compositions

For this episode we talk with Ian Glasper about his book Silence Is No Reaction: Forty Years of Subhumans. In the conversation we cover broader issues of ‘punk historiography’ and documenting more marginal musical, artistic, and political milieus that one is a part of (rather than falling on or relying about existing dominant narratives). Ian has ben writing about punk since starting his first zine in 1986, switching to writing books in the early 2000s as he grew increasingly frustrated that existing histories of punk tended to focus on the best known and most visible artists, completely neglecting the much wider and vibrant array of bands and musics.

Bio: Ian Glasper is the author of numerous books on the history of punk including Burning Britain: The History of UK Punk 1980-1984 (2004), The Day The Country Died: A History Of Anarcho Punk 1980 – 1984 (2006), Trapped In A Scene: UK Hardcore 1985 – 1989 (2009), and Armed With Anger: How UK Punk Survived The Nineties (2012).

Opening / outro music: The Subhumans, “All Gone Dark” (intro) and “From the Cradle to the Grave" (outdo)

28/06/2023

Doing a thing tomorrow night at MayDay Rooms

Radio Alliances, Affective Listening & Collective Practices of the Undercommons
June 29 @ 7:00 pm - 9:30 pm BST
with Silvia Maglioni, Stevphen Shukaitis and Graeme Thomson

How can we expand the potentialities of radio to be a membrane for affective connection between daily life practices, musical and sonic experimentation, voicings, radical pedagogy and political struggle? The gathering will begin with a presentation of the online radio/podcast platform firefly frequencies and will move gradually into a conversation about the potentialities of radio with particular focus on experimentation with hybrid forms. In the second part of the evening, we will share a project in progress to create an audio version of The Undercommons.

This project, initiated by Minor Compositions with the support of firefly frequencies, invites people to read out and record sections from the text that they have found particularly compelling or interesting. Keeping in mind the arguments put forward by Harney and Moten, the idea is to create a compilation of multiple voices and readings, bringing together and building upon the text, as a form of study through circulation and engagement. The session will end with a collective discussion and a potlatch dinner.

« All Events Radio Alliances, Affective Listening & Collective Practices of the Undercommons June 29 @ 7:00 pm - 9:30 pm BST « Stop the Boats? Free the Captains! Proletarian Shopping: The Cost Of Living Meets Popular Expropriation » with Silvia Maglioni, Stevphen Shukaitis and Graeme Thomson How ...

24/05/2023

Review of Paolo Sollier's "Kicks, Spits, and Headers" in Croatian.

Kultna autobiografija nekadašnjeg nogometaša Perugie, beskompromisnog komunista i feminista Paola Solliera prevedena je na engleski pa napokon i šira publika može saznati zašto je davanje autograma zabava za imbecile, a pljuvanje po pločnicima uzorne Švicarske dužnost

10/05/2023

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 11: Italian Operaismo with Gigi Roggero
https://fireflyfrequencies.org/podcasts/minor-compositions

This episode of the Minor Compositions podcast is recorded as part of the Ultradependent Public School exhibition at BAK (https://www.bakonline.org/program-item/ultradependent-public-school-2/)

For this episode we are talking with Gigi Roggero about his book Italian Operaismo: Genealogy, History, Method. In this conversation we cover a range of topics including the birth and development of operaismo as a political tendency, the concepts of class composition and political formation, and rethinking how we approach and re-activate radical histories in the present.

“Italian Operaismo provides a clear overview of the central moments in that tendency's development: from the Italian labor movement's crisis of direction in the 1950s, the encounter with the “new forces” within the working class at FIAT and elsewhere in the early 1960s, and the political journals Quaderni rossi and Classe operaia, to the experience of Potere Operaio and other organizations a decade later. Roggero provides a rereading of operaismo that is both salutary and provocative, one that stresses above all the role within it of subjectivity and political engagement, demonstrating the continued relevance of its subversive method as a tool for reworking the categories of radical and revolutionary thought.

02/05/2023

Nice review of Clarrie & Blanche Pope's graphic novel "Welcome Home" in the Spring 2023 issue of Fifth Estate.

02/05/2023

Video from the NSK State book release event

Video from the online book release event: Weapons of Mass Instruction. Art, the State Form, and the NSK State in TimeOnline seminar and book release event – ...

29/03/2023

New Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 10: Autonomia and Art with Jacopo Galimberti

https://fireflyfrequencies.org/podcasts/minor-compositions

This episode is a discussion with Jacopo Galimberi about this book Images of Class: Operaismo, Autonomia and the Visual Arts (1962–1988)

“During the 1960s and 1970s, Workerism and Autonomia were prominent Marxist currents. However, it is rarely acknowledged that these movements inspired many visual artists such as the members of Archizoom, Gordon Matta-Clark and Gianfranco Baruchello.This book focuses on the aesthetic and cultural discourse developed by three generations of militants (including Mario Tronti, Antonio Negri, Bifo and Silvia Federici), and how it was appropriated by artists, architects, graphic designers and architectural historians such as Manfredo Tafuri. Images of Classs signposts key moments of this dialogue, ranging from the drawings published on classe operaia to Potere Operaio’s exhibition in Paris, the Metropolitan Indians’ zines, a feminist art collective who adhered to the Wages for Housework Campaign, and the N group’s experiments with Gestalt theory. Featuring more than 140 images of artworks, many published here for the first time, this volume provides an original perspective on post-war Italian culture and new insights into some of the most influential Marxist movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries worldwide” - https://www.versobooks.com/books/4049-images-of-class